SCIS brown-bag lunch - what does inequality have to do with land reform?

Join Professor Michael Lipton and the Southern Center for Inequality Studies (SCIS) for a brown-bag lunch discussion on inequality and land reform.

What does inequality have to do with land reform? In South Africa, farmland redistribution is crucial for social justice, poverty reduction, and employment. But can redistribution harm food security or production? Professor Lipton will discuss some evidence that in high-unemployment areas, increases in smallholdings following carefully considered land reform are conducive to a productive and dynamic agricultural sector. Alternatively, high levels of inequality in land distribution can lead to stagnant agricultural economies.

Professor Michael Lipton is a global expert on the dynamics of land reform and smallholder agricultural development. He has many decades of research experience on these issues. He is the recipient of the 2012 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic and the author of the 2010 book, Land Reform in Developing Countries: property rights and property wrongs. His 1996 co-edited volume Land, Labour and Livelihoods in Rural South Africa remains a key reference in contemporary land reform debates.

The discussion is sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and takes place within the framework of the Climate and Energy work stream of the Towards Inclusive Economic Development in Southern Africa (SA-TIED) project. The Climate and Energy work stream is led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the South African Department of Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation.